LETTER LVIII

Mrs. Harlowe, toMrs. JudithNortonSunday, July 30.

We all know your virtuous prudence, worthy woman:
we all do. But your partiality to this your
rash favourite is likewise known. And we are
no less acquainted with the unhappy body’s power
of painting her distresses so as to pierce a stone.

Every one is of opinion that the dear naughty creature
is working about to be forgiven and received:
and for this reason it is that Betty has been forbidden,
[not by me, you may be assured!] to mention any more
of her letters; for she did speak to my Bella of some
moving passages you read to her.

This will convince you that nothing will be heard
in her favour. To what purpose then should I
mention any thing about her?—­But you may
be sure that I will, if I can have but one second.
However, that is not at all likely, until we see
what the consequences of her crime will be: And
who can tell that?—­She may—­How
can I speak it, and my once darling daughter unmarried?—­She
may be with child!—­This would perpetuate
her stain. Her brother may come to some harm;
which God forbid!—­One child’s ruin,
I hope, will not be followed by another’s murder!

As to her grief, and her present misery, whatever
it be, she must bear with it; and it must be short
of what I hourly bear for her! Indeed I am afraid
nothing but her being at the last extremity of all
will make her father, and her uncles, and her other
friends, forgive her.

The easy pardon perverse children meet with, when
they have done the rashest and most rebellious thing
they can do, is the reason (as is pleaded to us every
day) that so may follow their example. They depend
upon the indulgent weakness of their parents’
tempers, and, in that dependence, harden their own
hearts: and a little humiliation, when they have
brought themselves into the foretold misery, is to
be a sufficient atonement for the greatest perverseness.

But for such a child as this [I mention what others
hourly say, but what I must sorrowfully subscribe
to] to lay plots and stratagems to deceive her parents
as well as herself! and to run away with a libertine!
Can there be any atonement for her crime? And
is she not answerable to God, to us, to you, and to
all the world who knew her, for the abuse of such
talents as she has abused?

You say her heart is half-broken: Is it to be
wondered at? Was not her sin committed equally
against warning and the light of her own knowledge?

That he would now marry her, or that she would refuse
him, if she believed him in earnest, as she has circumstanced
herself, is not at all probable; and were I inclined
to believe it, nobody else here would. He values
not his relations; and would deceive them as soon as
any others: his aversion to marriage he has always
openly declared; and still occasionally declares it.
But, if he be now in earnest, which every one who
knows him must doubt, which do you think (hating us
too as he professes to hate and despise us all) would
be most eligible here, To hear of her death, or of
her marriage to such a vile man?